And soon a mightier voice than even Liddon's was added to the chorus of righteous indignation. Gladstone had resigned the leadership of the Liberal Party at the beginning of 1875, and for sixteen months he remained buried in his library at Hawarden. But now he suddenly reappeared, and flung himself into the agitation against Turkey with a zeal which in his prime he had never excelled, if, indeed, he had equalled it. On Christmas Day, 1876, he wrote in his diary--"The most solemn I have known for long; I see that eastward sky of storm and of underlight!" When Parliament met in February, 1877, he was ready with all his unequalled resources of eloquence, argumentation, and inconvenient enquiry, to drive home his great indictment against the Turkish Government and its champion, Disraeli, who had now become Lord Beaconsfield. For three arduous years he sustained the strife with a versatility, a courage, and a resourcefulness, which raised the enthusiasm of his followers to the highest pitch, and filled his antagonists with a rage akin to frenzy. I well remember that in July, 1878, just after Lord Beaconsfield's triumphant return from Berlin, a lady asked me as a special favour to dine with her: "Because I have got the Gladstones coming, and everyone declines to meet him." Strange, but true. 1878 was perhaps the most critical year of the Eastern question. Russia and Turkey were at death-grips, and Lord Beaconsfield seemed determined to commit this country to a war in defence of the Mahomedan Power, which for centuries has persecuted the worshippers of Christ in the East of Europe. By frustrating the sinister design Gladstone saved England from the indelible disgrace of a second Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that he played the hero's part. In Africa, and India, and wherever British arms were exercised and British honour was involved, he dealt his resounding blows at that odious system of bluster and swagger and might against right, on which the Prime Minister and his colleagues bestowed the tawdry nickname of Imperialism. In his own phrase he devoted himself to "counterworking the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield," and all that was ardent and enthusiastic and adventurous in Liberalism flocked to his standard. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven." One could not stand aloof--the call to arms was too imperious. We saw our Leader contending single-handed with "the obscene empires of Mammon and Belial," and we longed to be at his side in the thick of the fight. To a man born and circumstanced as I was the call came with peculiar power. I had the love of Freedom in my blood. I had been trained to believe in and to serve the Liberal cause. I was incessantly reminded of the verse, which, sixty years before, Moore had addressed to my uncle, Lord John Russell,